The ground was still trembling in the distance when Éreon stopped.
As if something—an echo, a rupture, an ending—had crossed the world and found him, even there, miles from the battlefield.
Marcus raised his hand immediately.
The entire army froze.
The soldiers stood still, turning their faces toward Éreon, waiting for an order he did not give.
He didn't need to.
His violet eyes were fixed on the eastern horizon, where the glow of dusk carved the sky like an open wound.
And then he smiled.
A small smile.
Ancient.
Unsettling.
"It seems Éon has finally risen to the Petteia… and will begin the game of the gods."
Marcus, who heard the line even from afar, approached, his horse still restless beneath him.
"Pe… Pette… Pati…"
He tried to pronounce it.
His tongue failed as if rejecting the sound itself.
Éreon tilted his head slightly.
The smile was not kind—it was deep, silent, made of eras that had long forgotten their own names.
"And even in this age…" he murmured, his voice low like a blade being unsheathed, "they call it chess."
He let the silence breathe.
"A poor translation… for a board that decides destinies. But it will do."
Marcus swallowed hard.
"And how does one reach it?"
Éreon drew in a slow breath, like someone carrying centuries on his shoulders.
"Paying the price…" he said calmly.
The black horse stepped once, and his voice fell to a whisper that froze the air around them:
"There is always one."
"After all… the board always collects."
For an instant, no one breathed.
Not Marcus.
Not the men behind them.
Even the wind seemed to listen.
Then, with a nearly imperceptible gesture from Éreon, Marcus raised his hand again and lowered it right after.
The army moved once more.
Hundreds of footsteps resumed their cadence—slow, heavy, like a giant heart starting to beat again after stopping one second longer than it should have.
Dust rose, swallowing half the light of the dusk.
Éreon did not look back.
Nor to the sides.
He only advanced, as if he already knew where the board was leading him.
But far from there, in another corner of the world, time did not follow the same rhythm.
On the plains of the Eastern Kingdom, beneath the thick veil covering the field like a newly awakened mist, some who stood there felt it.
A sudden shiver.
A weight that didn't come from the body.
A warning born not from the mind.
It was as if something invisible had been turned over, as if the world had just chosen its next piece without asking anyone.
And in that moment Éon moved.
Just a little.
Enough to reveal the dry blood on his face and the lifeless body of Karna still resting against his chest.
But Éon's eyes… those were open.
Fixed.
Deep.
Empty of everything—except decision.
The wind passed by him as if refusing to touch him.
As if it knew.
Something had been placed on the board.
And nothing would be removed without cost.
The dust slid across the plains like tired serpents when the White Viper raised her head.
As if witnessing an event she had waited centuries to see.
Her eyes stopped on Éon.
When her voice emerged, it didn't fill the space—it claimed it, soft like an inevitable promise.
"At last…"
The word drifted like cold silk.
"…fate places us face to face, Éon."
His black eyes stayed upon her; unshaken.
The smile that appeared on his lips carried no joy.
It carried awareness.
"So this is the look…"
a thread of admiration and sentence in the same breath.
"…of a prince who reaches the plane of the gods…"
She stepped forward with the precision of someone who never takes a single step more than needed.
"…who crosses the world of mortals…"
Her voice did not tremble;
each syllable emerged with the weight of ages.
"…who touches the abyss without being consumed…"
She observed him like one who recognizes a power long foretold.
"…and who is born capable of commanding all shadows."
A thin, almost ritualistic silence settled between them.
Then she tilted her head, an elegant, measured gesture—the exact mark of someone who knows truth never needs to be raised to wound.
"I confess… it is more impressive than I presumed."
A pause.
Delicate.
Cruel.
"More than I ever found in Whirok…"
Her smile narrowed, serene as snow covering graves.
"A wanderer… nothing more."
Éon remained without moving a muscle.
But his shadow…
it expanded—slow, deep, silent like a veil descending over a body already condemned.
He crouched, with a gentleness that did not match the devastation around him.
The shadow took the shape of a hand, tracing Karna's body with almost reverent care.
And, like black water pulling a secret from the earth, swallowed him, drawing him into its own darkness.
Only then did Éon rise.
The air fell into silence.
He released his breath slowly… a cold exhale that sounded like a sentence being written.
And attacked.
Fast.
Silent.
Precise.
Unseen, only felt.
The White Viper only noticed when she opened her eyes again. She had blinked—just once, but it was enough for Éon—
A thin cut traced her cheek.
Blood slid down slowly, as if even it hesitated to fall.
She lifted two fingers to the wound, touching it with an almost ritual serenity.
She regarded the red on her skin like someone contemplating an omen… and then smiled.
A slow smile.
Deep.
"Should I take this as a warning then?" she murmured, without a hint of anger.
Her tone carried no rage.
It carried interest.
And a strange trace of recognition.
That silent recognition only very old creatures grant when they finally encounter something worthy of note.
She ran her fingers over the cut again—and the flesh closed, obedient.
"I could prolong this little… amusement, prince," her voice slid soft, almost an enchanted whisper, "but I have already taken all I came to claim."
She stepped forward slowly, almost ethereal, like someone crossing centuries in silence.
"And when there is a next encounter…" her eyes gleamed with that ancient predatory shine, always impeccably controlled, "perhaps I will allow myself to face not the instrument… but the one who dared to send it."
The shadows behind Éon withdrew slowly, as if obeying something silent.
He faced her.
Said nothing.
Nothing needed to be said.
The White Viper held his gaze for a moment—and the smile that formed on her lips was not victory.
It was… understanding.
She inclined her head in a bow that bowed to no one—but made clear she was not retreating: she was choosing to depart.
A smooth motion of her hand.
The air around her distorted—like a white curtain being drawn from another world.
And then she and Ryden vanished, dissolving into the air in a white, weightless, impossible veil, like the old magics from tales no longer told.
The white viper had barely disappeared when the air around Éon began to… vibrate.
Not like magic.
Not like raw power.
But like reality giving way.
He took a single step forward—and the shadow at his feet shivered, like black water reacting to an improbable force.
Then it expanded.
First a small, pulsing circle…
then larger…
larger…
larger…
Until the darkness opened in a perfect radius around him, like an eclipse being drawn across the ground.
It was silent.
Deep.
Mathematical.
Nothing there moved by accident.
The shadows advanced in lines—precise branches—like slender hands stretching from the center, connecting to one another until forming a living fabric, an impossible diagram that should never exist on that plane.
And Éon was the absolute center.
The epicenter.
The anchor holding that "world" to the real one.
The wind withdrew.
The rain softened.
The plain itself seemed to hold its breath.
And for an instant—one single, yet eternal— the feeling was not of power being released…
but of a second world beginning to be born over the first.
Like a reflection from a mirror.
A whisper that should not have a voice.
The shadows vibrated, turning the circle into something almost tangible, almost solid—like the ground had become a living painting, sliding, breathing, shaping itself to his will.
Éon lifted his face.
Black eyes.
Without rage.
Without haste.
Without mercy.
Only existence.
And when he inhaled, the shadows followed—contracting with him, like a giant heart beating in reverse.
When he exhaled, the shadows expanded again, in a perfect, uniform wave… as if they were breathing with him.
As if they were him.
Éon lowered his chin slightly.
And whispered—so soft it sounded like a memory abandoned in the air:
"Inverted World: Limit."
There was no explosion.
No light.
No shape.
The shadow simply advanced.
A black blade, continuous, without edge, without texture, without fracture—a living carpet spreading forward, widening like an eclipse crawling across the ground.
Nothing in it rose.
Nothing leapt.
Nothing took shape.
It only… began to take.
The soil went first— not broken, not devoured with teeth, not torn away.
Erased, as if it had never existed.
Sound vanished with it.
The air turned heavy, thick, silent, as if even the wind were afraid to touch that surface.
And the shadow continued to expand, wide, smooth, steady—a black tide advancing without hurry and without mercy, undeterred by stone, by root, by body, by anything.
Everything that touched it disappeared.
Did not move.
Did not fall.
Did not burn.
Simply… ceased to be.
Éon began to walk.
The black tide followed him—faithful, silent, pure hunger trailing its master.
Each step erased more of the world.
The distant wall was still hidden by dust, trembling with the chaos of war… but the shadows were already advancing toward it.